The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

This is what hope looks like: Stakeout for the Orange-billed Nightingale-thrush in my backyard.

June 19, 2022

This week’s lesson in mindfulness: It’s essential to be in the moment during the long periods of ordinary if you want to see the rare miraculous. 

Last Wednesday, when dozens of hopeful birdwatchers descended on my yard after I photographed and reported Arizona’s first orange-billed nightingale-thrush, I told people the bird had visited for twenty minutes.  Later, I reviewed the images—all 68 of them—and noticed the time stamp: 7:34am on the first photo to 7:37am on the last.  Three minutes?!  The record bird materialized in the apple tree, skulked through the branches to the chokecherry tree, dropped to the pond to drink and then flew to the fountain’s spout for a second sip of water—all in a few minutes.  I could have been in the house getting a second cup of coffee.  Or in the yard watering plants or doing yoga or changing the settings on my camera.  I could have been on my phone!

But I wasn’t.  I was watching.  I had been for two hours.

The nightingale-thrush was certainly something unexpected.  Serendipity as an act of will.  But these two pandemic years when I started the Big Yard have been full of many amazing experiences, which I owe to simply being present and observant and accepting three simple tenets: 

1.  I am in the right place at the right time.

2.  Everything is a gift. 

3.  I haven’t earned it, nor do I deserve it. 

These principles govern not just my birdwatching but my life.  From watching an elegant trogon fly over my head and land on my gate to seeing my first fox sparrow drink from the fountain I built with my own hands.  A fountain that drew in other “life birds” like clay-colored sparrows and gray catbirds, purple finches and hooded warblers.  Seven life birds in all.  In my yard.  Some might call this dumb luck.  Maybe it is.  But what’s certain is that none of it would have come to me without rising from my bed each morning and taking a seat in my backyard in my pajamas.

Which, of course, makes me wonder what grace I’ve missed.

This morning’s Varied Bunting (female), a bird from Mexico that has appeared in the yard only once before.

The Fox Sparrow, a North Merican bird of coniferous forests I’d never seen before, until it arrived in the yard.

Life bird #434, a long-distance migrant of the northern Great Plains and Mexico, the Clay-colored Sparrow.

Life bird #435, a Gray Catbird checks me out.

Thanks for supporting the Big Yard! More to come!